Bank Failures: Protect Your Cash Now
What you can do to insure your deposits in case your bank goes under.
Sept. 2, 2008 — -- Back in April, I called bank failures a "rare occurrence" that few of us, born after the Great Depression, worried about.
It might be time for me to re-evaluate that description.
Since April, eight more U.S. banks have failed for a total of 10 this year, and more failures are on the horizon as the industry copes with the consequences of loose lending standards and bad decision-making.
The latest failure came Friday when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized control of Integrity Bank of Alpharetta, Ga. Integrity's five offices reopen today as branches of Regions Bank, a major Southeastern regional bank that assumed Integrity's $974 million in deposits. That means depositors will have full access to their money, even if their accounts exceed FDIC insurance limits.
The likelihood that this will not be the last bank failure this year is evident in the FDIC's announcement days before the Integrity takeover that 117 banks are on its "problem list" of troubled institutions. That's the most that have been on the list since 2003, and more are expected to join it as credit problems worsen, according to FDIC chairman Sheila C. Bair.
With more than 8,000 banks operating in the United States, chances are your bank will not be among those that fail and are taken over by the FDIC. But given what's happened in recent months, consumers should consider what steps they should take to protect their deposits.
The essential first step is to make sure your deposits are fully insured. Given the current turmoil in the banking industry, there is no good reason you should leave a single dollar uninsured by the FDIC or the National Credit Union Administration.
This is true, especially if you read news accounts indicating your bank is struggling with a large volume of bad loans, or otherwise struggling. One way to check on the health of your bank is to visit Bankrate.com's "Safe & Sound" ratings.
As most depositors know, the basic insurance limit on bank deposits is $100,000 at a single bank. If you know the rules well, however, it is possible for a single person to extend that coverage to more than $500,000 at one bank. This can be done by utilizing multiple account ownership categories, since the $100,000 insurance limit applies by account category.
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